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Monday, March 21, 2011

Margaret Parx Hays in the Family Tree

Last week I mentioned how I was busy adding my second great uncle, Charles Neilson Jones, and his descendants to my genealogy database. He had many kids who had many kids, so this was no easy task.

One of those people who joined my database was Charles' granddaughter, Margaret Parx Hays. By genealogical calculations, she is my grandmother's second cousin.

I did a quick search online for Margaret Parx Hays to see if I could find any other information to add to her profile. Boy, did I hit paydirt. She was quite the accomplished lady!

Margaret Parx Hays

Margaret Parx Hays was born in Gainesville, Texas in 1912 and passed away in 2008. The dash between those two dates is filled world travel and service to others. Her obituary provides a good timeline of her life.

She has a college building named after her and an entire museum website dedicated to her. She also the creator and benefactor of an historical image collection. Oh, and as far as I know, she's the only ancestor in my tree that's in the Congressional Record.

The "Parx" in Margaret Parx Hays is her father's name. It appears she never married or had children.

I spent a good hour fascinated and distracted by all I was discovering online about Margaret Parx Hays. She needs to have a book written about her. Perhaps I will put it on my list. I have a lot of potential books on my list as my number of intriguing ancestors continues to grow.

7 comments:

WOW, interesting! My paternal great-grandmother's maiden name was Hays and they were from Texas and Kentucky. I've not reasched this line too much for personal reasons. I do have info back to my great grandmother but that's it. My dad's name was his grandmother's maiden name and his grandmother's married name plus his father's last name - Hays Coulter Post. My mom use to tell me the spelling of Hays was very uncommon for a surname, that it usually was spelled 'Hayes' when a surname. I find that not necessarily true, at least in my research.

Margaret Parx Hays father was Parx Orr Hays. I am not related to him. He married Ianna Jones, who was the eldest daughter of Charles Jones.

There is a profile of Parx Hays in 'A History of Texas and Texans' by Francis White Johnson. A quick search for "Parx Hays" (with quotes) in Google Books should produce the profile, should you want to see if there is any possible connection.

Isn't it fun to find something like that? But, of course, I even think it's fun to find out info about family black sheep. They usually led much more interesting lives than a lot of the, shall we say, more "traditional" ancestors. As for the books on your list to write, you'd better get cracking before you become a genealogical statistic yourself. We always think we have all the time in the world to get things done but it just isn't always the way it happens. And the more years I see the more I realize I'll never get everything done that I'd like to.